Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy. But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.” http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1
lol, I'm reading this right now. Pretty good book, but if you've read too much Dan Brown, it's way too predictable. It does offer good prospective about what/why/how the NSA operates. Intrusive? Probably, but think of the chaos that would be if agencies like this didn't exist. Think of the harm that's been prevented that we'll probably never even hear about.
Geez, you just rip on me for anything these days, don't ya. lol. Edit: I'm glad I have a critic though, it keeps me honest and in my place lol. But to answer your "oh please" statement: I think the fact it's a spying agency setup and ran by the "NSA" backs up my statement. Regardless of how innocent my statement may have been. It was just to get people thinking, that is all.
I wonder if it will ever become known as 'hackers heaven'... all the cool stuff (aka personal information) stored in one place!
Oh he will... http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/...urveillance-program-returns-bigger-than-ever/ Every step you take.. Every move you make.
Really! How much data storage would something like this require? Gathering up the worlds comm's can't see it myself.
Its definitely possible. (something completely unrelated but is about data amounts): http://www.skatelescope.org/about/facts-figures/ When they talk about global internet traffic, they don't just mean emails etc., they also mean all downloads, bittorrent transfers, skype videos, downloads, browsing etc. The data centre is only storing a fraction of that. On a separate issue, those that the NSA are supposedly targetting will just be wiser for the most part in how they communicate. There are several ways to do so that won't be stored at the data centre.
Its possible in the future, but not atm. 15 million 64 gig ipods a day is like 900 petabytes a day. There is no server in the world that comes close to that daily. That project doesn't get finished till 2024 though, so maybe by then they can store that kind of data.
My brother and cousin both served in the Army for over two years, and the technology and computing power they have far exceeds the best of what the average consumer can buy of the market. They may have the technology for it. But they may not have the manpower.
Eh no. At the operational level, they are on the order of a generation behind or further. I worked in electronics in the Navy for a couple of decades and carried a TS clearance for most of that time. Much of the equipment takes years to get through the process of being certified for use.
